Originally I was going to write today’s article yesterday at 8:00 AM. In the universe I did that, this Syndergaard article gets buried thanks to his on the record conversation making the rounds on every Mets media site. As an aside: I largely agree with him. When you’re employer asks you to do something, most of the time you have to do it, but what the Mets are asking the players to do seems detrimental to their state of mind going into one of the few games of the year everyone is nervous to play.
Anyway, this article isn’t about that. This article is about what projections programs think Syndergaard will do this year. The Mets success is contingent on it’s starting pitching (which has been a true statement since 1962, but really since 2015) and Noah Syndergaard is a big reason for that.
2018: 154.1 IP, 3.03 ERA, 2.80 FIP, 1.212 WHIP, 9.0 K/9, 4 WAR, 2.47 DRA
Career: 2.93 ERA, 2.66 FIP, 1.132 WHIP, 9.9 K/9, 2.45 DRA
He had an uptick in a bunch of his career numbers last year in the wrong direction, but coming off of a season where he pitched 3/4ths of April and the second half of September (kinda), his 2018 was pretty great. The problem is, every projection sees him taking a step back (or basically the same but just slightly a step back):
(Citations: Baseball Prospectus (BP) projections are from the Baseball Prospectus annual which can you can get here. It’s highly recommended. ESPN projections can be found here. ZiPS can be found here. Steamer can be found here. Baseball Reference projections (BR) can found on the players BR page which linked elsewhere on this article. )
BP, ZiPS and ESPN are all close to each other. Which is weird because BP is always the most conservative and projections regressions and ESPN is generally the opposite. It’s not surprising that BR is a little more conservative than the rest, they tend to also go that way.
What is interesting is how close everyone is in WHIP with the exception of BR. Those WHIPs are an improvement over last year (and BR would be a disappointing regression). It’s his WHIP makes him feel so dominate, hopefully that is a positive sign heading into Saturday when he makes his first start.
